Author Archives: pdo
CloudFlare Recap: I [Don't] Like It
A few months ago, I signed up for CloudFlare and added this blog to their service. At first, I was terrified. I hate messing with DNS settings. Then I was jubilant — my bandwidth was down about 40%. Next I was worried, because traffic dropped dramatically. Finally, I was upset — Google had cut me [...]
I’m with Coco, Wisconsin
I like Paul Krugman’s take on the Wisconsin situation: Some background: Wisconsin is indeed facing a budget crunch, although its difficulties are less severe than those facing many other states. Revenue has fallen in the face of a weak economy, while stimulus funds, which helped close the gap in 2009 and 2010, have faded away. [...]
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Can Web Design Be Great? Or Can It Only Be Terrible? #gawkerfail
Gawker’s redesign has me thinking about website design. I hate their new look. It’s terrible. I dislike it so much, I’m not going to even link to their site. Maybe it caters to tablets, but that’s such a small segment of the market at this point — it makes no sense to alienate the keyboard/mouse [...]
Double AdSense RPM 2.0
One of my most-read posts is about doubling AdSense revenue. The basic idea is to use common sizes (300×250, 728×90) and to give ads prominent (enough) placements. Jamming an advertisement in the footer or low on the page is a poor experience for the advertiser — nobody will see his ad — and a poor [...]
The Blog Posts That Keep On Giving
I love the long tail of the internet. Much of my blog’s traffic comes from old content. Thanks, old posts: People want to change their 2WIRE AT&T DSL wireless router settings. It’s easy to setup WPA2 instead of the WEP default — if you know where to look. I’ve helped hundreds of people do this! [...]
Posted in The Internets Leave a comment
What’s My Media Empire Worth?
I wrote about AOL’s acquisition of TechCrunch a few months ago. This week, AOL bought the Huffington Post for the same reasons — great, niche content with low(ish) overhead. Instead of WordPress, Huff Po is built on Movable Type. AOL wants content — not tech. Anyway, this got me thinking. Is $315,000,000 a good deal? [...]
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Google, Please Copy Blekko
Damn, maybe everybody is right and Google is getting worse. Blekko (the new-kid-on-the-block search engine) stumbled across my consciousness again yesterday with this article from TechCrunch. Turns out, Blekko has banned content farms like eHow.com and Encyclopedia.com from its search results. I used to work for the company that ran Encyclopedia.com and I’m fascinated by [...]
No, My Twitter Followers Aren’t Prostitutes, They’re Porn Stars
Last month, I posted that many of my Twitter followers appeared to be prostitutes. Turns out, they’re probably porn stars. From the Daily Beast: Twitter in the past year has transformed the way porn stars communicate—they now have the opportunity to reach fans and build followings off screen. Housley’s statistics illuminate the interactions. Porn Star [...]
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@aubonpain #fail – I’m Getting Coffee Elsewhere Because Of 6¢
Is 6¢ enough to change somebody’s behavior? 6¢ is nothing! But what does it represent? I used to get coffee nearly every day from Au Bon Pain. It was not because of its location — there are about 14 coffee shops located along my commuting path — but because it was SO EASY. At Au [...]
Posted in Business Tagged Au Bon Pain fail, Au Bon Pain pricing fail, Au Bon Pain ripoff Leave a comment
What I said was: Give me all the bacon and eggs you have.